100669-why-server-mergers-are-not-a-sign-of-panic
Content ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- They also closed one of the largest shards on EU by only giving people about a 24hour notice. RIP Icewatch. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- I am not against forced server merges, but folks do tend to take their names pretty seriously and I can imagine a whole lot of butthurt if a forced server merge causes folks to lose their names. I didn't play SWTOR, but I do recall some friends talking about the server merges there - a few of the more populated server were identified as "destination" servers, for folks to choose from. Seems like we had a similar system back in SWG, but I really didn't move serves much there. | |} ---- ---- The way STO and CO handle this is, names are allowed to collide. In those games, your account has a public handle that is appended to the name when necessary to disambiguate, like, "Moe@larry" and "Moe@howard" are both "Moe", but in mail and stuff you can distinguish between them. I've seen other games append "#" and a string of digits (that again you don't have to use unless you need to disambiguate). Second Life has surnames. | |} ---- ---- Well, best case scenario, we implement all-on-one servers with sharding. How do you handle it? Forced surnames? Codenames allocating you to some directory or another (like, maybe an address block for housing)? I'm not sure, I just keep thinking maybe it would be out and out better if we were on single servers whether Wildstar is exploding in population or not. What's the theoretical ceiling in allocating people to certain shards from one megaserver? | |} ---- Too bad the core game was horribad. I've heard you mention Rift so often that I'm wondering why you aren't playing the game you love rather than the game you hate. It's weird. | |} ---- Okay! In some namespaces, WoW appends "#" and a bunch of digits to your name, so the name itself doesn't have to avoid collisions. (I've seen this with battle.net accounts.) In other namespaces, WoW combines the name with the server name when necessary for disambiguation (and that could be used in the context of merges by making it "original server name"). (I've seen this with half-merged servers that show people from multiple realms adventuring in the same outdoor zones to make things look crowded.) I've never paid any attention to Rift, and don't even know what kind of game it is, so I can't comment on that one. | |} ---- I'm not sure there is one, but, the way you handle public names has to change, and the way you handle database access and synchronization might have to be architected differently. (Example of the latter: we know the instancing can make the "world server" for "Thayd" behave well, but all the instances are still writing to the same auction house database, so will that scale? Some design choices make this a non-issue, and others make it intractable.) The first problem, we've got clues how to solve. The second problem, we can't even guess whether it exists, let alone estimate the cost of changing it, without access to source code or service architecture documents or something like that. | |} ---- ---- LOL I was half-trolling in that post:) | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I have a feeling cross server guild circles for raiding will become a thing. | |} ---- ---- Wouldn't that be a good thing? Especially if they came with cross-server guild banks. | |} ---- ----